Priming Sentence Production in Older Adults: Evidence for Preserved Implicit Learning

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Structural priming- speakers’ unconscious tendency to echo previously encountered message-structure mappings - is thought to reflect the processes of implicit language learning that occur throughout the lifespan. Recently, structural priming has also been used as a means to facilitate language re-learning in age-related language disorders such as aphasia. However, little evidence is available on whether structural priming remains effective in healthy aging, limiting clinical translation of the structural priming paradigm. This study examined the impact of aging on the strength and longevity of abstract structural priming and lexical boost effects.

Method

Twenty-four young and 24 older adults participated in a collaborative picture-matching task where the participant and experimenter took turns describing picture cards using transitive and dative sentences. In Experiment 1, a target was elicited immediately following a prime (0-lag), whereas two filler items were embedded between a prime and a target sentence in Experiment 2 (2-lag) to examine longer-term priming effects. In both experiments, the verb was repeated for half of the prime-target pairs to examine lexical boost on structural priming.

Results

At immediate priming, older adults showed both abstract structural priming and lexical boost in transitives and datives, similar to young adults. At longer-term priming, only abstract priming effects were significant in both groups of participants, with no evidence of age-related reduction in priming.

Conclusions

Both lexically-specific and independent mechanisms of structural priming remain resilient in older adults, supporting the view that structural priming reflects life-long language learning. Further, the findings provide empirical basis for applying structural priming to elderly clinical populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Aging
• structural priming
• syntax
• language learning
• sentence product

Acknowledgement

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health (R01DC019129 and R21DC015868 awarded to JL). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We also thank Megan Pentecost and Joslyn Burke for their assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health [R01DC019129,R21DC015868].